Q&A: How VR can automate delivery of mental health treatment

Once synonymous with gaming, virtual reality (VR) has made inroads in recent years in a wide range of applications — particularly in healthcare, where the ability to create immersive, virtual worlds has led to some remarkable advantages for patient care.

Daniel Freeman, a professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Oxford, has conducted research into the use of VR as a treatment tool for a range of mental health conditions, including paranoia- and anxiety-related disorders. (His work has involved investigating the use of VR therapy for overcoming fear of heights and of needles, for instance.)

Freeman founded OxfordVR, a spinout firm (recently merged with US-based BehaVR), which is responsible for gameChange, a VR-based treatment for severe psychosis-related agoraphobia that’s currently in trials with health services in the UK and US. The gameChange treatment involves the use of VR by house-bound patients to simulate everyday situations such as a café, pub, or bus trip. It was used in a trial involving hundreds of patients — thought to be the largest randomized, controlled trial involving VR mental health treatment so far — with the results published in The Lancet indicating that the automated VR therapy led to significant reductions in distress related to everyday situations.    

To read this article in full, please click here